RE-CREATING IDENTITIES: POSTWAR DUTCH REFORMED IMMIGRANTS IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA LISA L. SCHALK Bachelor of Arts, University of Lethbridge, 2012 A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Lethbridge in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS Department of History University of Lethbridge LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CANADA © Lisa L. Schalk, 2016 RE-CREATING IDENTITIES: POSTWAR DUTCH REFORMED IMMIGRANTS IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA LISA L. SCHALK Date of Defence: April 14, 2016 Dr. Sheila McManus Professor Ph.D. Supervisor Dr. Henrie Beaulieu Assistant Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. Heidi MacDonald Associate Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. Christopher Burton Associate Professor Ph.D. Chairperson, Thesis Examination Committee This thesis is dedicated to my grandparents and my husband’s grandparents who immigrated to Canada from various countries and whose stories inspired this project. iii Abstract: This thesis examines how postwar Dutch immigrants who came to southern Alberta re-created their self-understanding in light of their new situations. Oral history interviews which I conducted with nine of these postwar Dutch immigrants are the main sources for this study and are integral throughout. Because the nine individuals whom I interviewed were all members of Calvinist Reformed churches, both in the Netherlands and in southern Alberta, my study focuses on that segment of the Dutch immigrant population. I argue that, despite the dislocation they felt and the steep learning curve they experienced after immigrating, the nine individuals whom I interviewed re-created their identities in southern Alberta by firmly grounding themselves in the various Reformed churches and church communities which they joined and created. iv Acknowledgements: I would like to first acknowledge and thank my supervisor Dr. Sheila McManus for her untiring help and encouragement over the course of this Master’s thesis. I also deeply appreciate the help and encouragement of Dr. Henrie Beaulieu, Dr. Heidi MacDonald and Dr. Glenda Tibe Bonifacio. All of these women have influenced me to become a more thoughtful student of history. I am also deeply indebted to my nine interview participants who agreed to meet with me during the summer of 2014. They willingly and openly shared their experiences of the wartime Netherlands, the immigration process, and their first few years (and beyond) in southern Alberta. I appreciated their interest in my project and I am very privileged to have had the opportunity to record their stories. This thesis project was generously supported by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship provided by the government of Alberta. Lastly, I would like to thank my husband Nicholas and my two children Jayne and Michael who have provided times of laughter, tears, and confusion throughout this thesis project. Thank you for your unconditional love. And thank you to God my Father for giving me strength, inspiration, and insight into this topic. v Table of Contents: Abstract iv Acknowledgements v List of Tables vii List of Figures viii Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Chapter One: Context is Vital – Who They Were and How They Came 29 Chapter Two: Dislocation and Belonging in Southern Alberta – Everyday Life 52 Chapter Three: Re-creating Identities – A Reformed Foundation 88 Conclusion 115 Bibliography 120 vi List of Tables: Table 1: My Interview Participants. Page 8. vii List of Figures:* Photo 1: The Van Westenbugge family aboard the Waterman, 1953. Page 47. Photo 2: The Guliker family, looking for lost little Harry, in front of the Canadian Pacific Railway train which brought them to southern Alberta, 1951. Page 49. Photo 3: The Guliker family’s first house in southern Alberta before they fixed it up, 1951. Page 56. Photo 4: The Guliker family’s first house in southern Alberta after they fixed it up, 1951. Page 56. Photo 5: Ann Wielinga Bosker’s first school class in Iron Springs, 1949. Page 66. Photo 6: Johanna Guliker and some of her family working in the beet fields, no date. Page 69. Photo 7: Peter Bosker with Bert Hildebrandt’s combine harvester, 1949. Page 70. *All photographs are in the possession of the respective interview participants and have been reproduced with permission. viii List of Abbreviations: CRC – Christian Reformed Church NRC – Netherlands Reformed Church RCA – Reformed Church in America ix Introduction: Of the 105,000 Dutch immigrants who came to Canada in the decade after World War II, 17,200 settled in Alberta concentrating in central and southern Alberta where other Dutch families had settled previously.1 Historians Howard Palmer and Tamara Palmer point out that the postwar Dutch immigrants were the third largest immigrant group coming to Alberta at that time.2 The small Dutch population already in southern Alberta was certainly a drawing factor for some of the new postwar immigrants as was the fact that those pre-war immigrants had established Dutch Reformed churches. For many Dutch immigrants, religion was a defining factor in their lives in the Netherlands. Dutch religious scholar Jan Platvoet states that church attendance in the immediate postwar Netherlands was as high as 75 percent. This was due in part to the way Dutch society was organized and divided into four distinct “pillars.” The postwar Dutch immigrants whom I interviewed and who inform this thesis were all members of the Calvinist Reformed pillar and their strongly-held religious beliefs heavily influenced their migration experiences. Several scholars who have written about the postwar Dutch immigrant movement to Canada argue that, contrary to most postwar immigrant groups, religion was much more important to the postwar Dutch Reformed immigrants than was their ethnicity (being Dutch).3 In line with these scholars, I argue that through the difficult dislocation created by immigration the nine postwar Dutch immigrants to 1 Anthony Sas, “Dutch Migration to and Settlement in Canada: 1945-1955”, (PhD. dissertation, Clark University, 1957), 64. 2 Only the British and German immigrant groups were larger. Howard Palmer and Tamara Palmer, “The Religious Ethic and the Spirit of Immigration: The Dutch in Alberta,” in Peoples of Alberta: Portraits of Cultural Diversity, eds. Howard Palmer and Tamara Palmer, (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1985), 159. 3 Stuart MacDonald, “Presbyterian and Reformed Christians and Ethnicity,” in Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada, eds. Paul Bramadat and David Seljak, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 171; Palmer and Palmer, 164, 166, 169-70. 1 southern Alberta whom I interviewed re-created new identities for themselves which were firmly founded in familiar, Dutch, Reformed Christianity. Identity is a dynamic concept. Canadian migration scholar Vijay Agnew contends that identity “is socially constructed and it changes with time, place, and context.”4 Therefore, immigration which is a moving of people to a new place and context strongly affects identity. In fact, the dynamic process of identity formation becomes more difficult when an individual or group decides to immigrate because immigration itself necessitates a large amount of adjustment. Immigrants can no longer be the same persons they were in their home country because their context has changed. But neither do they fit seamlessly into the new host culture. Migration scholars Glenda Tibe Bonifacio and Vivienne S.M. Angeles note that migration is also not a moment-in-time event; it is a continuing process which affects an individual’s view of the world and of him/herself.5 Further, they observe that immigrant identity re-creation is a two-way give-and-take between the new country and the old home country.6 Modern migration studies indicate that the best approach for immigrant adaptation is a holistic and two-dimensional process which maintains old traditions while adopting new ones.7 As immigrants work through the process of adapting to a new country, they re-create themselves by choosing which old-country traditions and ways to continue (and which to drop) and which new-country 4 Vijay Agnew, “Language Matters,” in Diaspora, Memory, and Identity: A Search for Home, ed. Vijay Agnew, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 28. 5 Glenda Tibe Bonifacio and Vivienne S.M. Angeles, Introduction to Gender, Religion, and Migration: Pathways of Integration, eds. Glenda Tibe Bonifacio and Vivienne S.M. Angeles, (Toronto: Lexington Books, 2010), 1. 6 Bonifacio and Angeles, 5. 7 Jean S. Phinney, et al., “Ethnic Identity, Immigration, and Well-being: An Interactional Approach,” Journal of Social Issues 57, no. 3 (2001), 495; Laura Zimmermann, et al., “Ethnic Self-Identification of First-Generation Immigrants,” International Migration Review 41, no. 3 (Fall 2007), 769. 2 ways to adopt (and which to ignore). By making these choices they create new identities for themselves which combine elements of both their old and new cultures. The postwar Dutch immigrants to southern Alberta whom I interviewed certainly participated in a give-and-take process during their first few years in Canada. Many aspects of their lives had to change once they arrived in southern Alberta: language, work methods, living conditions, transportation methods, etc. But the immigrants also worked strenuously to maintain traditions which were most important to